To add:
The notes disappearing after reaching crescendo with the selected ability is cool. Maybe when you reach the crescendo these notes glow instead and hitting with the crescendo orb at this time empowers them? Even without the empower, the notes are the main focus when you are playing the instrument so seeing these notes glowing would give (me personally) a better indicator that the crescendo is ready.
Logging out (had to force log out) and logging back in seemed to clear up my issue.
and they started building back up again.
I’ve just been having issues with having the notes register as being hit. I hit on the beat, but the drumstick goes straight through the instrument without taking it about a quarter of the time.
The position of the marimba and orbs needs to be able to be moved. Its too close to my body and feels very awkward to play, especially the orbs. If i could just tilt the entire plane away from me a little bit (that the marimba/orbs/notes are on), and then move it a little farther away, it would be much better.
It is very unclear what is happening. None of my actions (other than crescendo) seem to have any effect or control over what is happening, and even the passive abilities dont really give any feedback as to what they are doing, so it is unclear if they are even working.
I dont like that this class doesnt have any type of basic attack ability. I think that it would be much more rewarding/fun to play, if hitting each note fired out a projectile (musical note?) which would have whatever effects of the orbs that you have active. Maybe some or all of them would auto target. Maybe certain orbs/notes would have to be aimed, but either way hitting a note should have a noticeable effect, and reward you more than just charging up the crescendo.
I would also like the note playing to be more rythmic, instead of just hit 3 times, or 2 times etc. …more later
Additional thoughts.
Selecting the active orbs is very janky and they often get turned on/off by accident.
I noticed that the active orbs have different colors when they are selected (red,blue,yellow i believe) but it was unclear if these specific colors actually represented anything. You could however make them represent a specific set of notes for that specific orb. For example, there could be notes of all 3 colors, and hitting that specific note would activate the corresponding orbs passive preferably via a visible projectile when applicable. (The color coding has since been implemented)
It may also be nice to have each specific orb prompt the user to play a unique melody (via a specific pattern of notes) instead of the very bland and often seemingly, not synced up to any of the music, notes that appear currently. I would like it so that having more active orbs would make you have to play more notes. To clarify, I think that each orb should represent 1/3 of the notes that you will be playing ultimately (when you have 3 active orbs). Each orbs note pattern (Sorry, all of my musical ability is in my ears, i dont know what the correct term for this is) should be unique to that orb. And, any combination of 3 orbs that you choose should work together musically, making its own unique song/sound, instead of just requiring you to hit each note 1,2, and 3 times.
I’m confused about the class.
Are my orbs supposed to be colored? They are all showing as white.
What does the ultimate bar do?
How do I know the progress of my bottom orbs?
Hitting the notes falling down feels kind of weird and doesn’t register every time.
Probably not the class for me.
When you add more than 1 orb, you shouldn’t have to just hit the same note you otherwise would’ve more times (i.e. if you have all 3 orbs on, you hit each note 3 times in a row). Instead, different orbs should have different melodies. Right now the class can be played with one hand. We should have to hit two notes at a time sometimes, and hit notes in different patterns.
It’s also possible to just hit each key as fast as you can until the note passes through it. There needs to be some kind of penalty for missing a note and for hitting a key without a note/off melody. Maybe there could be some kind of multiplier (in terms of how fast the orb charges) based on how many notes you hit in a row? It would also be cool if the tempo would speed up as you got perfect chains, to make it more challenging (and also fill the orbs faster because more notes are being hit per second).
The damage orb abilities are kind of hit or miss (hah) right now. It’s very easy to slightly miss a target, especially because of the random weaving.
It’s hard to feel like we’re actively contributing to a fight now, except for when we release our orbs. We should have more control over the passive effects (i.e. passives activate every time we hit each correct note/note sequence to reward us for accuracy, instead of passively) (basic attack/effect?). Any noticeable effect from each hit/chain that rewards us in combat is good, but firing off a basic instead of having passives that work automatically would be cool.
It would be fun if we could change the pitch of our keys too. We could harmonize outside of combat and play actual songs, and wouldn’t get tired of hearing the same 5 notes.
The bard orb music is also already getting annoying, especially considering that it doesn’t match the ingame music or the notes/tempo being played (and the fact that it blares loudly over the music we’re playing). If nothing else, it should conform more to what is being played. It also shouldn’t be so loud to other players; people should hear the bard’s playing itself more than the music effect that’s identical for each bard.
Implement a MML-interface so we can write our own melodies to take with us to battle! 
It would probably be for the best to give the bard music it’s own volume slider, or tie it to BGM rather than sound effects.
Things that I noticed on bard
Bugs I noticed.
God yes, Bard music slider is a must.
Bard was fun and is definitely going to fall into the standard bard issue of either being very OP or very underpowered.
The position of the insturments and the Marimba needs to be editable. I wan the insturments out of the way. I’d like to place them above me so I don’t accidentally hit them and I’d like the Marimba to be lower with my health info on the top of it so I can see clearly.
Passives don’t really provide enough information to show that they’re working. I would occasionally see a bolt of energy flying out in a random direction but most of the time this didn’t happen. It made me feel like 1. passives are not functioning properly and 2. what was happening didn’t line up with any description of the instruments I had activated.
I couldn’t tell if enemies were taking damage from my auras or that players were being healed by my auras.
Towards the end of my stream I noticed that I could rarely actually hit any notes. I’m not sure what triggered this but it started after I hit level 5 and selected a talent. If it matters I selected the talent on the right. Closing and reopening the game would resolve the issue for a time but it would quickly return.
The class appears to fall into the same problem the old warrior used to have. It feels like it can’t solo anything. This may have to do with the weirdness of passives and the fact that the crescendos projectiles flew over the heads of the smaller enemies without hitting them.
This may be due to the lack of visually seeing your passives at work but it’s very easy to get disconnected from the battle and not feel like you’re doing much.
I’m sure I’ll have more feedback later…
Its funny to watch a bard get attacked. They should be able to hit the mobs with the mallets.
The bard has been the best class I’ve played in the beta by far. I was saying for a while that I would not switch classes when reborn comes out, but the bard’s kit is so fun that I have to continue. The things I would like to bring to attention:
The issues that I can see:
-The orbs selected when crescendo’d will sometimes double hit and become deactivated, which can be easily re-activated with another hit luckily.
-An orb’s crescendo effect will sometimes get stuck active, which confuses me into hitting it to complete its affect which disables the orb, while also not fixing the effect. Only way to fix is re-equip said weapon or orb.
-Playing while running. Not sure if this is intended or not, but positioning your hands awkwardly allows for hitting the notes and orbs while running. Not sure if the hitbox can’t track while running or…
-The biggest issue however, is the aggro. I know a patch was made to reduce this, but whenever anyone fights in my timezone, as long as my orbs are on (weapon being out not required) I will deal damage to the mob they are attacking, which usually leads to it attacking me not them. This is great for free experience and loot, however not great when you are just trying to talk with others.
A few other things:
-Mind letting us know what 5 musical notes the bard plays so we can write our own music sheets to play ingame? I have been going around playing “Mary had a Little Lamb” and “This is Halloween” and it has been wonderful and would love to write more.
-At the moment the class is easily abused, as you can just hit the correct note with three orbs with no timing at all by spamming it, so it would be more rewarding if you lost, or just didn’t achieve the damage or buff you tried to hit when mis-timed.
That’s about all I have to say, I know many changes are coming to this class in the future and I’m excited, hopefully you don’t stray too far from this idea though, because it’s wonderful. Thanks.
I’m seriously at a loss with the bard. Likely it is due to extreme lags, I see latency up to 1300, but nothing is registering, perhaps 1 out of 6 hits does even make a sound. I get that this is a beta issue, likely (mobs are not even moving, but teleporting around… spells don’t leave the wand, warrior hits don’t register etc.), but more exact timing requirements will likely spoil the class for many who deal with lags already, in the original game.
PS: Upgrading my graphics driver (back) to 416, closing some things and restart fixed lags a good deal, I get now how to play it, very nice. But yea, hits are still not registering every time, so not sure if I could play the class if that matters much.
Okay yeah there are not actually Bard talents yet, so I’m not sure what you picked haha. If you send me an output log next time you play I’ll see if that’s what’s causing it.
Also for the record there is no Bard Super yet that does anything, either.
Thanks for the feedback in general on the Bard so far everyone. I’m glad to see some people are liking it and I agree it still has a lot of work to be done. It’s honestly one of the most challenging classes we’ve ever designed by far. I agree there needs to be more of an indicator to match between what you are doing and what is actually happening. It’s kind of hard to do (we tried to show it with the healing bolts that track their target for example) without cluttering up the whole battlefield, but I have some ideas.
We’ll put in some more work on this before the next test to hopefully move some stuff around based on your feedback. Also note that the current note arrangements for each orb aren’t final (and in fact a lot of them just share the same ones currently which is why you end up with a lot of “same 3 note in a row” stuff going on).
We did reduce the Bard song output level, let me know if that’s any better, in the last patch.
The bard is interesting - the falling notes are pretty simple to keep up with and hit. Though since you can’t hit them while moving it feels like a very immobile class. I don’t understand having a movement speed increase song that can’t be played while moving. Maybe this is already being addressed.
More importantly, I’d like to offer feedback on the way the class works as a whole.
Instead of playing like a game of Guitar Hero, could you just start playing the proper notes/rhythm for a particular orb. Thus activating it that way. Each orb would have a specific rhythm and notes associated with it. Like a song. So that when you play that specific rhythm it would activate that orb. Continuing the song would lead to a crescendo.
So for example: let’s say you want to heal, you just start playing the heal song and your party begins to heal as the heal orb builds to a crescendo. Stop playing the heal song to play a damage song and then that starts that orb. Maybe the heal song continues while it’s orb has hit it’s crescendo for X number of seconds. So your first song effects continue until you use the crescendo or start a 4th song, or time runs out on the crescendo.
I just think it’d be nice to get away from activating an orb and instead just allow you to start playing a song to start an effect.
Something like the Ocarina songs in a Zelda game. You have to memorize the appropriate notes to activate. I don’t have any problems with the guitar hero style but this could also be interesting.
i agree. ocarina of time style would be way more interesting.